To jump in as the ex-co-president of EA: Cambridge from last year:
I think the differences mostly come in things which were omitted from this post, as opposed to the explicit points made, which I mostly agree with.
There is a fairly wide distinction between the EA community in Cambridge and the EA: Cam committee, and we don’t try to force people from the former into the latter (although we hope for the reverse!).
I largely view a big formal committee (ours was over 40 people last year) as an addition to the attempts to build a community as outlined in this post. A formal committee in my mind significantly improves the ability to get stuff done vs the ‘conspirators’ approach.
The getting stuff done can then translate to things such as an increased campus presence, and generally a lot more chances to get people into the first stage of the ‘funnel’. Last year we ran around 8 events a week, with several of them aimed at engaging and on-boarding new interested people (Those being hosting 1 or 2 speakers a week, running outreach focused socials, introductionary discussion groups and careers workshops.) This large organisational capacity also let us run ~4 community focused events a week.
I think it is mostly these mechanisms that make the large committee helpful, as opposed to most of the committee members becoming ‘core EAs’ (I think conversion ratio is perhaps 1⁄5 or 1⁄10). There is also some sense in which the above allow us to form a campus presence that helps people hear about us, and I think perhaps makes us more attractive to high-achieving people, although I am pretty uncertain about this.
I think EA: Cam is a significant outlier in terms of EA student groups, and if a group is starting out it probably makes more sense to stick to the kind of advice given in this article. However I think in the long term Community + Big formal committee is probably better than just a community with an informal committee.
To jump in as the ex-co-president of EA: Cambridge from last year:
I think the differences mostly come in things which were omitted from this post, as opposed to the explicit points made, which I mostly agree with.
There is a fairly wide distinction between the EA community in Cambridge and the EA: Cam committee, and we don’t try to force people from the former into the latter (although we hope for the reverse!).
I largely view a big formal committee (ours was over 40 people last year) as an addition to the attempts to build a community as outlined in this post. A formal committee in my mind significantly improves the ability to get stuff done vs the ‘conspirators’ approach.
The getting stuff done can then translate to things such as an increased campus presence, and generally a lot more chances to get people into the first stage of the ‘funnel’. Last year we ran around 8 events a week, with several of them aimed at engaging and on-boarding new interested people (Those being hosting 1 or 2 speakers a week, running outreach focused socials, introductionary discussion groups and careers workshops.) This large organisational capacity also let us run ~4 community focused events a week.
I think it is mostly these mechanisms that make the large committee helpful, as opposed to most of the committee members becoming ‘core EAs’ (I think conversion ratio is perhaps 1⁄5 or 1⁄10). There is also some sense in which the above allow us to form a campus presence that helps people hear about us, and I think perhaps makes us more attractive to high-achieving people, although I am pretty uncertain about this.
I think EA: Cam is a significant outlier in terms of EA student groups, and if a group is starting out it probably makes more sense to stick to the kind of advice given in this article. However I think in the long term Community + Big formal committee is probably better than just a community with an informal committee.